This page contains a list of slides and presentations available for download.

Opal: Ruby in the browser
Author(s): Damiano Stoffie
Date: Thursday, December 22, 2016
Tags:
rubyopaljavascript
Opal is a Ruby to JavaScript source-to-source compiler. It comes packed with the Ruby corelib you know and love. There we show a quick introduction on how Opal can be used in practice.

Introduction to Sinatra
Author(s): Adolfo Villafiorita
Date: Wednesday, May 06, 2015
Tags:
ruby
Quick introduction to Sinatra with personal (positive)
considerations about the framework and two running examples (one
with data mapper and other for single user applications).

The Food Composition Databases (FCDBs)
Author(s): Ahmed Fadhil
Date: Friday, March 13, 2015
Tags:
food
This study analyzes various food databases of different nations
and compares the data about food each database contains. This
step will guide us to analyze the data in each databank and avoid
redundancy in the data, hence create a consistent set of data
table.

Understanding Best Practices for ICTD Projects: towards a Maturity Model
Author(s): Aaron Ciaghi
Date: Monday, November 03, 2014
Tags:
ict4dmaturitymodelspm
The implementation of Information and Communication Technologies
in developmental contexts presents specific social and technical
challenges. Understanding the lessons learned and documenting best
practices under extreme conditions, such as the ones found on the
African continent, can provide valuable insights for ICT
deployment in developing countries. At the same time, the
experience in use cases and technical know-how of developed
countries can help regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa in
harnessing the full potential of ICT for social and economic
development. This paper describes the preliminary results of an
international project based on the exchange between two European
institutes and two South African universities, whose goal is to
define a set of best practices to improve the success rate of ICT
for Development projects. This led to the definition of a Maturity
Model to evaluate performing organizations with respect to what
characterises a successful ICTD project to guide them in the
improvement of their processes towards becoming more effective in
addressing the needs of rural communities. The practices and
maturity goals included in the maturity model have been collected
through an extensive literature review and interviews with project
managers.

Designing for the African Prepaid Mobile Internet Generation
Author(s): Alette Schoon
Date: Thursday, September 18, 2014
Tags:
ict4ddesignSouthAfrica
The profile of South Africans online is changing as
internet-enabled smart phones and feature phones become ubiquitous
in low-income communities. However, poorer users are using a
different internet, a prepaid internet trickle where text is
dominant and where most people only briefly enter “the cloud” of
content sharing. This means that app developers and designers need
to re-imagine a world beyond the binaries of access or non-access
where internet use can mean multiple things. This seminar explores
how unemployed young people from the low-income black
neighbourhoods of Grahamstown, a small town in South Africa, use
ICT under very difficult economic circumstances. In these digital
ecologies, PCs are peripheral, and digital production and
connectivity revolves around the mobile. Media sharing happens
predominantly offline via Bluetooth, but also now on online
platforms that allows users to only download what they want - such
as media sharing WAP sites on Russian platforms. Social networks
such as WhatsApp and Facebook mobile are also becoming
increasingly important. Creative expression is very important for
these young people and is seen as essential for developing the
community – here development is not only seen in material
terms. Young people use mobile phones and computers for a variety
of creative activities and Facebook plays a key part in sharing
these. Using a PC becomes a challenge when all internet access is
negotiated through the mobile, and PCs are a makeshift assembly of
old parts put together in backroom computer ‘workshops’ by
self-taught technicians. The author, although not a designer or
computer scientist herself, is keen to explore design
considerations and welcomes interaction on what these practices
could mean for ICT4D design. How do we design for those
intermittently on the mobile internet but outside “the cloud”, for
example? How do we design for second-hand communal PC users who
are part of the mobile-first generation and exclusively use the
mobile internet? When mobile phones are designed primarily for
content consumption – in a space where there are few PCs and many
people who want to create content – how can we design apps to make
them more suited to digital production? The author will share some
examples from the UCT (University of Cape Town) ICT4D lab, where
designers have focused on Bluetooth technology to respond to
limited internet access.

Doing Good with ICT
Author(s): Aaron Ciaghi
Date: Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Tags:
ict4dagile
Introduction to ICT for Development and ICT for addressing Social
Issues. The presentation includes a very small intro to Agile
techniques.
This presentation was given at UNITN in preparation for the ICT
Days 2014 Hackathon event.